Darrin Godin: Hi, I'm Darrin Godin, and this is Talking Hope. My guest today is Kerry O'Neil, nursing manager at City of Hope, Newport Beach. Kerry, thank you so much for joining us today.
Kerry O'Neil: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Darrin Godin: I'm looking forward to getting to know you. Congratulations, first of all, on your recent celebration being recognized on a national stage by the Oncology Nursing Society as a finalist for the Extraordinary Healer Award. What a great recognition.
Kerry O'Neil: Oh, thank you. It was a amazing event and so many great nurses there and everyone in the audience really could have been recognized. It was an honor to be recognized like that. It was very humbling.
Darrin Godin: I was going to say, how did that feel to be honored by your peers like that?
Kerry O'Neil: Oh, it was great, and that's obviously not why we do what we do, but it's nice that your teammates and your coworkers and people recognize the special work that oncology nurses do. So it was really, really great. And my daughter, who's a new nurse, was there with me, so it made it all that much more special.
Darrin Godin: Oh, that is special to be able to share it with the next generation.
Kerry O'Neil: Exactly.
Darrin Godin: And you've been nursing for over 40 years, I understand. So you probably have been passing it on to the next generation for a long time. So take us back. What sparked your passion for the nursing profession?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, thinking back on it, I always liked math and science, and when my grandfather was very sick, I can still remember my dad coming home and he was in one of those nursing homes at that time. It was a few years ago, and he had said, he was passing away. He was dying, and he called out to the nurse and said, "Hold my hand, Nursey, I think I'm going to die." And it just made me realize how special having somebody there with you was to patients.
And then as it turns out, my great-aunt, when I went back to Ireland with my family and my parents, turns out she was the nurse that slept in the hospital at night, years and years ago on this little community hospital in Ireland. So I guess it is in my blood a little bit.
Darrin Godin: It's in your blood. I share a similar story. When I was a teenager, I lived with my grandparents. They were like my parents and my grandfather died of lung cancer, and on the last day when he passed, the home health nurse was there, and she was actually kneeling down next to his bed and praying for him as he took his last breath. So that also put something in me for healthcare. I thought I would go on to be a doctor someday. That didn't quite work out, but here I am hosting the podcast and talking to you.
Kerry O'Neil: How fun is that?
Darrin Godin: But special memory as well.
Kerry O'Neil: You realize how important healthcare people are to everybody, not just patients, but families and all that.
Darrin Godin: That's awesome. So you got your start or your training at a great community hospital, and here you are now at a NCI Designated Cancer Center.
Kerry O'Neil: Exactly.
Darrin Godin: Really focused on the one thing, on really taking care of patients who have cancer and really trying to beat cancer. So tell us, what are the keys to being an oncology nurse?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, I think there's a few main things, I feel like, you really have to be sympathetic and empathetic to your patients and what they're going through. This is probably the hardest thing that they've ever had to deal with. And you also have to be intellectually curious, I guess, because the everything's changing.
You can have a treatment one day and then the next day it's changed and there's always new drugs, which is great. When I first started, there was maybe three or four drugs that were the main drugs, and everybody got treated with those drugs. And now it's so fine tuned and personalized that you really have to stay up on your game and really keep up on education, keep up on new drugs, keep up on side effects, and you really have to be able to be knowledgeable about that, to be able to share with your patients.
Because years ago, most patients that got chemotherapy, almost all, were in the hospital. It was a hospital-based treatment. And the world of oncology has just moved so much toward the outpatient world where patients really need to be the ones educated and knowledgeable about what's going on so that they can advocate for themselves and get their side effects treated and be knowledgeable about how chemotherapy works or immunotherapy or targeted therapy, so that they're able to handle the things that come with that and be able to communicate to their care team to be able to solve some of those problems.
I always tell people, "If you don't know if it's a problem, call us because we have so many tricks in our little bags that something could be bothering you that you don't even realize is a symptom and we can tell you how to fix it." So communication with the care team is huge.
Darrin Godin: And is there a certain type of person that goes into oncology nursing?
Kerry O'Neil: Gosh, when I think about oncology nurses, I just feel like they're never in it for the money. They're in it for caring for people and relationships because with oncology patients, it's not like it's a surgical case and you go in and take care of the patient, which everybody needs and is great, but you have to be able to develop relationships and trust with your patients for them to have good outcomes in their care.
And I think the more knowledgeable you are and the more you can instruct the patient and pass on that knowledge even, "Why are you giving a nausea medication and how does that nausea medication work?" And if they understand it, they're much more able to control their symptoms and really be at home and enjoy themselves as opposed to suffering through things.
Darrin Godin: Kerry, I've seen many patient comments ,and often your name has been mentioned, especially as we opened Newport Beach, Fashion Island, what about a year and some change ago, almost a year and a half ago now.
Kerry O'Neil: Like three years.
Darrin Godin: Is it?
Kerry O'Neil: It's been three years.
Darrin Godin: You're right, three years. I don't know where I'm doing the math in my head. Geez. Yes, you're right. About three and a half years ago now.
You've been mentioned, and I think it's because you, and your colleagues there, you really don't view nursing just as a profession, do you? It's more of a calling to you.
Kerry O'Neil: Oh, for sure.
Darrin Godin: Talk to us about that. What does that really mean? How does that make the work different?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, I think we all have the same goals and we all worked together as a team. In fact, I just came from the clinic and we had dueling reactions side by side with two patients, and all the nurses jumped in and we all just worked together. One was giving the drugs, one was running to the pharmacy getting the drugs, asking how the patient is, doing vital signs, and just really working together as a team.
And I think it seems like oncology nurses, they have their goal as the patient and they're so patient focused that whatever you can do for the patient to make it easier for them or to get them through something is what you do. I give my nurses a lot of credit. They just stepped right in and took over and went and did what they were supposed to do. And it wasn't even any words really.
We just handed to somebody, "Here's the medication, here's this. How's the patient? What are the vitals?" And just all worked together as a team and it was really nice to see that.
Darrin Godin: We're so thankful for all of you there. Another question for you. Do oncology nurses form a different type of relationship with their patients than maybe other types of nurses?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, I think we do, and we try to make it so that cancer isn't their life. It's just a piece of their life. And so we really encourage them to continue living and do the things that are important to them and really bring it into perspective.
I just had a patient who went back to his daughter's graduation and it was really, really important to him. And we gave him medication, we built him up. I threatened him to not take off his N95 mask, and he was so happy that he went. His daughter was really happy and he came back without being sick. So I think I threatened him enough.
Darrin Godin: And he listened to you.
Kerry O'Neil: He listened.
Darrin Godin: You said something very important there. You said, "Cancer is not their life. It's a part of their life." And I know I hear that often cancer patients or patients with cancer say, "It's not my cancer. I didn't ask for it. Don't call it my cancer." Those words are important, and that encouragement that you give is so important as a nurse.
I'm wondering, this is probably a good time to ask it, what does hope mean to you, Kerry?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, I think just that. Hope means helping people through their journey so that it doesn't become their life. Cancer is not their life. It's just a piece of it. And whatever we can do to help them continue to meet those milestones and do the things that they want to do and things that are important to them, and be able to support them in those dreams and through their challenges so that they are able to continue to make it just a piece of their life and not take over their life. And people need balance and they need to still be able to... It's almost like you give them permission to do those kind of things.
We give them restrictions and we tell them how to do them correctly or safely, but they still need to be able to know that they can do those things and still be a part of their families and their gatherings and all that and not have this totally take over.
Darrin Godin: That's so beautiful. And I'm so appreciative of who you are as a person and as a nurse taking care of our patients. And I know if I ever am in that situation, I'm going to want to have you as my nurse.
So I think it's a good time to also talk about, you said your daughter's going to be a nurse as well. So we're trying to build that pipeline here in Orange County for more nurses. We know there's a nursing shortage. There's a lot of great organizations in the market that also need other nurses, and we're trying to recruit folks to come and be a part of what we're doing here at City of Hope.
So what would you say to nursing students or newly graduated nurses who may not know exactly what area they want to go into? What would you tell them about oncology and how would you draw them in?
Kerry O'Neil: Well, and we do have some nursing students here, and he actually just joined our Oncology Nursing Society. So we're already kind of reeling him in and getting him excited is interesting because I did have a student one time who came up and I was precepting them and he came up to me and said, "I didn't realize how happy it was up here."
And I think just changing the way people look at oncology, that it isn't a sentence, it's another disease, and it can be treated and you can live your life. And I think we've had so many advances, especially in the time that I've been in oncology, that sometimes people only hear the bad stuff. They don't hear about all the good stuff that's either coming down the pipe or how things have changed.
I tell my patients that years ago we waited for people to get sick before we gave them medication. So I used to tell them, "Call me in at 3:00 because six hours from now, you're going to not feel well." And it wasn't in our mindset to pre-medicate. And now, we very rarely have anybody sick in the clinic. We pre-medicate. We try to account for symptoms and prevent them, and not only in the clinic, but when they're home as well.
So people's journeys through chemotherapy aren't what they used to be in years of ago. It's really come a long way and people are able to go to work. I have some patients, I can't get their appointments in because they're traveling so much and I have to work around their travels. I know not to interfere with my ladies' hair appointments. We have to work around those.
So we want to make sure that nurses coming into it know that it's an exciting field and it's not something that is just sad. It's not a sad place. In fact, our patients call it Cancer Camp. They come here, they have a good time. It's like Cheers in Boston. They walk in the door, everybody says hi. They wave. And they really realize that if they have to be somewhere, I can't tell you how many times that they have to be somewhere and get their treatment, they can't think of a better place to be. That the atmosphere here is happy and it's comfortable. They feel like we're family and it's home and it's a good place to be.
And in fact, I had a lady yesterday that said, "I know this sounds funny, but I kind of love coming here and talking to everybody. I missed you guys when I was in the hospital." Especially during COVID because we opened right at COVID as well. We were their entertainment, we were their social life, we were their outing. And it really made the patients and staff grow close together.
And then we finally got to meet some of their spouses because they weren't allowed to come in. And it was really nice to then connect. They didn't realize we knew so much about them when they came in because we've had conversations with the patients.
Darrin Godin: So it's a community?
Kerry O'Neil: Exactly.
Darrin Godin: They're on a journey and we're right there with them on their journey, and we're a part of it with them, their families, their caregivers. That's so exciting.
Kerry, thank you so much for, like I said, for what you do for City of Hope, for what you've done for our patients. Thank you for being an advocate for nursing. Thank you for being an advocate for oncology nursing, and thank you, again, for what you're doing for patient satisfaction as well.
It sounds like that community you're building is really important and it makes all the difference, I think, for patients to come to a place that not only is top in care and able to give them the most recent and the most advanced breakthrough care, but also for people who really care for them and care for their families.
So thank you for everything you're doing and for leading that team there at Newport Beach and training up the next generation of nurses as well to be so awesome.
Kerry O'Neil: Well, I can't imagine doing anything else, honestly.
Darrin Godin: Well, thank you so much, Kerry, for joining us today, and thank you all for joining us today, and we hope that you'll join us on our next episode of Talking Hope. I'm Darrin Godin. We'll see you next time.